1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a power source management technique, and more particularly to a computer system with power source control and a power source control method.
2. Related Art
With increasing progress in developing the mobile computing technology, various electronic products are continuously put forward and innovated. As these electronic products can help users handle various tasks in work, study, and life, for example, word processing, data analysis, Internet services, and multimedia entertainment services, they have become an important part in the life of the users.
However, the more powerful the function of an electronic product is, the more hardware equipment is required, such as a processing chipset, an externally inserted interface card, and a radio transmission device, thus relatively increasing the consumption of the power. Therefore, the power source management system is an important trend for the development of the current electronic products, especially for portable electronic devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), notebook computers, or mobile phones.
Though the portable electronic device is capable of being used with the movement of the user, which is very convenient, it is only powered by a built-in power supply device of its own, for example, a battery, when no other power supply device is externally attached thereto. Therefore, due to a limited power supply, the power saving techniques of the electronic device are rather important.
For example, a central processing unit (CPU) of an ordinary personal computer (PC) or notebook computer is capable of adjusting the power consumption of hardware components such as the CPU, hard disk (HD), display, or memory according to the setting of an advanced configuration and power interface (ACPI) based on the idle state of the user in the operating system (OS), so as to carry out a multi-level electric power adjustment, and enter a so-called power save mode or sleep state. The power source management executed by software is mainly performing manual settings in an OS such as Windows in accordance with the use habit of the user and according to the fact whether the power supply is sufficient or not. Therefore, this power saving technique is not only complex in setting, but also poor in efficiency.